Idris Elba Accidentally Feeds A Rumor Mill That Really Wants Him To Star In Django Unchained

Idris Elba is about to learn his lesson for tweeting during a slow holiday weekend. The actor known from The Wire, The Office and most recently Thor set off a rumble of rumor yesterday with just three tweets. As generally happens with these rumors, it's all speculation and maybe a little bit of wishful thinking going on, but since it's still a slow holiday weekend we may as well get in on the fun. Here are the three tweets in question:

That third one was accompanied with a self-shot photo of Elba on a plane, which you can look up if you're so inclined. The part that's gotten everyone riled up, of course, is the bit about the "controversial" director and the "controversial" part. Now that could mean anything, including a lot of projects we don't know anything about yet-- he could be starring in a Lars von Trier-directed biopic of Martin Luther King Jr., or hey, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger is directing a Terminator franchise reboot and wants Elba to play Kyle Reese. But a lot of minds immediately jumped to Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Django Unchained, a story about an escaped slave teaming up with a German bounty hunter to take revenge on his former owner during the American Civil War. Christoph Waltz is likely to play the bounty hunter, and last we checked Will Smith seemed to be the top candidate to play Django. But could the role go to Elba instead?

Again, there is pretty much no evidence that this is the case, beyond some willfully interpreted tweets from Elba-- who would be great in the part, of course-- and a lot of people who don't want to see Smith work with Tarantino (they're probably still hurting from Seven Pounds, and I get where they're coming from). Until we got some kind of official denial from Tarantino or Elba, news about someone else playing the part or maybe another tweet we can twist into movie news, let's just speculate in the comments below. Do you want to see Elba work with Tarantino? Or are you with me in thinking Smith might be great in the part after all?